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PAGE 4A THE BANKS COUNTY NEWS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2008 Editor: Angela Gary Phone: 706-367-2490 E-mail: AngieEditor@aol.com Website: www.mainstreetnews.com Opinions “Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” — Thomas Jefferson What caused Tim Madison’s downfall? BY MIKE BUFFINGTON Publisher, The Banks County News T HE PROSECUTION of former District Attorney Tim Madison, his wife Linn Jones, and a former ADA is over. Madison has given up his law license and is in jail on a six-year sentence for theft. His wife was sentenced to serve 180 days in a detention center and former ADA Brett Williams got a fine and probation. Although the charges have worked their way through the legal system, many wonder how a district attorney could have gotten so far off track. A year ago, Madison was among the elite of the state’s prosecution community, a position he’d held for a quarter-century. Now he’s sitting behind bars. I cannot fully answer the “why” questions. Nobody can. But having spent weeks researching and writing the investigative articles we published last spring about Madison’s questionable financial dealings, I did get a sense about some of the surrounding events that led up to his fall from grace. DISTANT RELATIONSHIPS Madison’s career began with a lot of promise. He was considered a bright, rising star when he took the DA’s seat in 1983. He had a gift for public speaking and his closing arguments seemed to carry weight at jury trials. His advocacy for victims of domestic violence won him supporters in a judicial circuit where family violence is epidemic. But over the years, a darker side emerged in Madison’s professional demean or. The sometimes combative nature of our advocate judicial system is always difficult on professional relationships, but Madison seemed to be more distant than necessary. Although not a loner, his professional aloofness toward the local bar reportedly rubbed some in the area legal community the wrong way. Efforts to mend that rift were reportedly rebuffed. That strained professional demeanor eventually grew outside the local com munity. A former DA in another circuit told me Madison came to be viewed as “sleazy” by some of his colleagues around the state. That opinion was amplified when Mr. Madison apparently became obsessed with winning the annual volleyball tournament held at the state DA convention each summer. While most other DAs viewed the volleyball tournament as noth ing more than a fun social occasion, Madison reportedly approached it as a competitive, must-win event. Several former employees told me he would have “mandatory” volleyball practices for his staff to get ready for the summer event, even having one staff member miss his child’s birthday party to practice volleyball. Madison’s hyper- competitive, win-at-all-costs mentality was apparently met with disdain by his peers. He reportedly became known as the “Volleyball A—e” by some of his colleagues from around the state. That same distant, strained relationship also evolved between Madison and many in local law enforcement agencies. Although the two groups should be natural allies, many local law officials came to mistrust, even detest having to work with Madison. Part of that was due to Madison’s aggressive stand toward prosecuting law enforcement officials; he seemed to relish prosecuting cops. On several occa sions, he launched high profile investigations into leading law enforcement officials, only to see those probes fail to prove any wrongdoing. Some officials told me his disdain for law enforcement officials was so obvi ous that they wondered if something had happened in his background to make him dislike cops. STAFF DISSENSION Despite these professional tensions, many of those I spoke with who worked under Madison said that until the mid-1990s, they considered him to be a “straight arrow” prosecutor. For example, one former ADA said Madison had a rule that employees in the circuit who wanted to drink alcohol should go outside the circuit to partake. Madison didn’t want his associates seen drinking in local establishments. Most of those I spoke with traced Madison’s current problems to the late 1990s as his first marriage dissolved and he took up with Linn Jones, whom he would later marry. Madison helped Jones get employment with several area law enforcement agencies and later hired her in the DA’s office. But that relationship became divisive inside the DA’s office. Although Jones worked for several other law enforcement agencies, at least some of the time she was actually being paid through a victims’ assistance grant administered by the DA’s office. Madison reportedly helped to find her jobs with area law agencies. Not surprisingly, hints of favoritism began tearing at the fabric of the DA’s staff as Jones received what many considered special treatment by Madison. One staff member apparently became so upset about the Madison-Jones relationship that Madison reportedly prayed with the staffer about his personal life problems and asked for spiritual guidance from the employee. But if the personal relationships were troubling, so was Jones’ financial rela tionship with the DA’s office. Several former employees said that at one point in 1998 or 1999, Madison was questioned by staff members about allegations of questionable time cards Jones submitted under a grant funded position. “When confronted, Mr. Madison said Linn (Jones) would make up the time. She did not. Several senior staff members left during 1998 and early 1999 over issues like that,” one source close to the situation told me during our investiga tion last year. Staff turnover even before Jones entered the picture had already caused problems. Madison reportedly became angry at the short tenure of some newly- hired staffers and instituted contracts calling for “liquidated damages” to be paid if staffers left the DA’s employment before their contract was up. Although Madison was never charged with having diverted those “liquidated damages” payments, our investigation last year never found where the funds had been turned over to any of the county government, as they were supposed to have been. analysis Many of the people who left the DA’s office during this time stayed in touch with each other over the years. It was as though they had become an under ground fraternity of former Piedmont ADAs. Many had heard rumors about ongoing problems in Madison’s office and weren’t shocked that we were inves tigating some of Madison’s financial dealings. Still, none of the former staff members I spoke with seemed to really know the depth of the problems, or the details of what was going on. Many staffers said they didn’t like what they saw and they didn’t like how Madison treated his staff, so they found jobs elsewhere and left. MONEY FROM THE SKY About the time Madison began a relationship with Jones and the staff prob lems accelerated, another event happened that seems to have played a key role in Madison’s eventual downfall. In the late 1990s, the state created an add-on fee to fines for “victims assistance” programs. Those funds flowed directly to the DA’s office. For a time, they were relatively small amounts. But around 2001, the funds began to grow as several towns in Jackson County began aggressive road patrols. It was like money falling from the sky into the DA’s office. (At one point, the state shifted the payments to the clerks of court, but then changed it back the next year to the DA’s office.) Those funds amounted to a lot of money over the years, but there was virtu ally no state or local oversight of that money. In 2002, Jackson County audi tors accidentally found that Madison had made some payroll payments to an employee from one of the accounts. Those wages had not been included on the employee’s W-2 form. The auditors issued a “finding” and Madison said he would stop the practice and turn the funds over to the county to handle. But that didn’t happen and as late as 2007, he continued to make payments out of the victims’ assistance accounts for extra wages to employees. It was also those funds Madison began to use for trip expenses and entertain ment, sometimes for staff members, but often for himself and Jones. Although he was not charged with theft in those expenses, they were clearly an abuse of discretion. CLOUDS GATHER After Madison divorced his first wife, he and Jones eventually married. Rumors that they were driving government vehicles on personal trips began to circulate. One story alleged that Jones drove a Jeep that had been confiscated in a drug bust and had a ski rack mounted on top for a trip to Colorado. Whispers that Madison was drinking heavily and gambling also circulated, vices that he later blamed at his sentencing hearing for having led him to lose his “moral compass.” Staff turnover continued, but Madison apparently became more distant from the day-to-day operations. Law enforcement officials began to grumble about the quality of the DA’s staff work. They also complained that Madison was often gone from the office and they couldn’t reach him to discuss important cases. After our articles were published in March 2007, a number of people contacted me — both crime victims and those who had been prosecuted by Madison — and complained his office had treated them unfairly. I never found evidence he mishandled criminal cases, but many people apparently believed their case had not been dealt with correctly. What no one knew at the time, however, was just how far Madison was reach ing into the public trough to support his private lifestyle. He put Jones on both the Banks County and Jackson County payrolls at the same time with a total of 60 hours pay per week. Since he often moved people around the three offices in the circuit, he knew that the three counties didn’t compare notes on his office staff or payrolls. But having Jones on two payrolls did create an unmistakable paper trail, a trail uncovered last year after we shifted through a mountain of payroll documents from the three counties in the circuit. In addition, Madison created a scheme to have a young ADA staffer doubled- paid, once by the state and again by Banks County. Part of the Banks County money ADA Brett Williams received was then kicked-back to Madison, although Williams apparently thought the funds were being used for a training fund. To his credit, Williams owned up to the payments when I called last year and asked him about his financial relationship with Madison. He seemed to honestly believe Madison was using the funds for a legitimate purpose. That Madison could manipulate an ADA to that extent seemed implausible at the time, but in the end, the courts also indicated a belief that Williams had been used and manipulated. ATTEMPTED TO STOP THE STORY When we began our newspaper investigation into Madison’s handling of pub lic funds in January 2007, we had no idea where it would lead. A confidential source contacted us and based on that, we began asking questions and making open records requests. (We eventually made some 22 open records requests to local and state agencies during our investigation.) How lucky can Republicans be? When Madison heard about our asking questions and the records requests, he secretly attempted to have a lawyer pressure us to back off. At the time, the state probe into former Jefferson Police Chief Darren Glenn was in full swing and we had been openly critical of the state’s handling of that investigation. Ironically, it had been Madison who started the Glenn investigation way back in 2005. When he learned of our questioning about his office finances, Madison con tacted Glenn’s attorney, former state attorney general Mike Bowers, and asked him to pressure “the newspaper” to back off our investigation of the DA’s office. Madison reportedly told Bowers he would make the Glenn case go away if Bowers would convince us to stop asking questions. We knew nothing about that at the time. Bowers never contacted us about Madison’s call. We only learned about it months later after Madison had been indicted. But in retrospect, it fits. Madison attempted to get the state to give him back the Glenn case in January 2007, about the same time we began making a number of open records requests to the DA’s office. And he told one of our reporters at the time he didn’t think the Glenn case should go forward. In the end, the state refused to hand the Glenn case back to Madison and the matter became moot. Still, his bid to play politics with the case is troubling. Why Madison thought Bowers would go along with such a scheme, or why he thought we would acquiesce to such a deal, isn’t clear. In hindsight, it appears to have been an act of desperation by a man who had something to hide. DOWNFALL After our investigative series was published in March 2007, and Madison resigned in May, some in the judicial circuit expressed amazement, questioning if Madison had really done anything wrong. Indeed, I was a little shocked at some in the legal community who expressed strong support of Madison in spite of the serious allegations he was facing and the nature of the evidence. And that was our biggest concern. When we began our series of investigative articles, I was doubtful about follow up. Although Madison had irritated many of his colleagues, he was still part of a tight fraternity that doesn’t like one of its own coming under a microscope. Lawyers may fight among themselves over cases, but they tend to circle the wagons when one of their own comes under fire from the outside. That reluctance to believe a district attorney would steal from the counties he represented was a major consideration in how we presented our stories about Madison’s financial dealings. We knew we would have to show what had hap pened, or people just wouldn’t believe what they were reading. That was why we published copies of checks and printed a long list of expen ditures from DA office accounts. The details of what had happened were impor tant to show the serious nature of what we were writing about. Of course, Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker did quickly launch an investigation into Madison’s office. Our fear that no real investigation would fol low proved to be unfounded. AG Baker and his office stepped up and quickly did the right thing. For that, they are to be commended. LESSONS LEARNED But none of this really answers how or why Madison got so far off course. Was it arrogance? Was it having stayed in office so long he believed himself to be invincible? Was it greed? Did alcohol abuse dislodge his “moral compass” as he claimed in court? Perhaps it was a little of all of those things. But I think the biggest part of the problem was a simple lack of accountability inherent in the DA’s position. DA offices operate as independent islands. Because of what they do, they have to have a large measure of political independence. They don’t answer to their local county governments since they are a state agency. But they don’t answer to the state, either, because they are elected independently and aren’t part of a “real” state agency. In addition, DA political races are rare unless there is an open seat. Incumbent DAs seldom have opposition at the ballot box, which leaves them almost totally unaccountable to the public. For the most part, DA offices self-regulate. Local bar groups could apply pres sure to the office, but most lawyers don’t want to be openly critical of a DA with whom they have to do business in representing clients. In short, being a DA is almost like being a local king. It is this lack of oversight and accountability that I believe is the biggest lesson to be learned from Madison’s downfall. Whatever the condition of his internal “moral compass,” he stole public funds because he could. There was no insti tutional accountability, either locally or at the state level, to make sure it couldn’t happen. Every public agency, including the DA’s office, should get independent finan cial auditing every year and all public funds mandated by the state should be audited. None of this is to excuse Madison’s actions. He didn’t have to steal or abuse public funds. Most DAs across the state don’t abuse them. But as this sad story shows, even our top prosecutors are subject to tempta tion. They are human, with all the moral frailties that implies. But DAs are also granted immense power over the lives of other people. Without oversight, that can become a bad combination. For their protection, and ours as taxpayers, prosecutors should be held to the same level of financial accountability as any other public official. Such safeguards, had they been in place, might have prevented Tim Madison from compromising his oath of office. Tuesday’s presidential primary results produced another stark indicator of the disaster facing Democrats this fall. At the beginning of this election season, it looked like the 2008 campaign would represent salvation at last for the beleaguered Democratic Party. Our Republican president is breaking records for unpopularity, and scandal continues to dog Washington Republicans. Campaign cash that had gone overwhelmingly to national Republicans has shifted heavily in favor of the Democrats. Now, as their presidential nomination battle slogs for ward, Democrats appear increasingly likely to fumble away the golden opportunity to take the White House. Many cable talking heads agree. Their analysis goes like this: The egos of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband are unnecessarily prolonging the Democratic nomination fight, even though she has no hope of winning. The talking heads believe that if she would just get out of the way, the party’s stronger candidate, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, could get on with the business of beating the Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and the Democrats would be better off for it. The national media is right that Clinton has no chance of winning the nomination. If anything became clear Tuesday night during Clinton’s big Pennsylvania win, it is that no matter what happens in the remaining primaries, Obama’s biased media allies will interpret it as a sign of Clinton’s impending demise. The next Clinton stumble, be it on May 6 or later, will be used by the press to declare her dead and gone once and for all. The press is also correct that the Democrats’ hope of winning the presidency is slipping away because of the nomination fight. They are right for the wrong reason, however. The reason Democrats are blow ing their opportunity is not because of the length of their primary battle. It is because, once again, Democratic primary voters are determined to nominate a weak candidate. Obama has a very high, even insurmountable, hill to climb to win the presidency. His race is certainly a major factor, but it is not decisive. Even his liberalism, while an obstacle, is not the biggest one he faces. Obama’s most difficult problem (like John Kerry’s in 2004) is his total cultural disconnect from voters outside the urban elite of our big cities. Kerry is a Massachusetts politician married to a billion aire and living in Boston’s most exclusive neighborhood. Obama is a Harvard-educated lawyer who lives in intown Chicago, and who won his U.S. Senate seat on the strength of metro Chicago’s dominance of Illinois statewide politics (plus some great luck in drawing a series of fatally flawed opponents). Neither Kerry nor Obama was raised in truly wealthy households, but the backgrounds of both are very different from those of most Americans. Kerry is the son of a diplo mat who attended prep school in Europe for a time. Obama talks about his Kansan mother, but he was raised in Hawaii and attended an elite private high school before heading for the Ivy League. The Clintons certainly have their faults as candidates and as people, but both spent almost two decades in Arkansas politics, and they understand how people outside the nation’s elite live their lives in ways that Kerry and Obama never can. You don’t run for office eight times in Arkansas without learning to appeal to folks you would never meet at the Yale Club. Obama’s much-ballyhooed comment about rural Pennsylvania voters being “bitter” was probably insulting to some, but its significance is much deeper than that of a run-of-the-mill gaffe. It revealed that he has a sense that someone who lives in Donora, Pa. (or Dublin, Ga.), is a specimen of another species to be examined and explained to his fellow urban elites. He has as much connection to them as any of us would have to a Martian. The depth of Obama’s rural disconnect and the electoral problem he faces are revealed by the county returns from Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary. In many counties outside metro Philadelphia, Clinton was so dominant against Obama (who outspent her by millions) that she won the Democratic primary with almost the same percentage margin that McCain (who was running against the fringe Ron Paul and the withdrawn Mike Huckabee) won the Republican primary. What should scare Democrats is that voters in those counties will determine whether the Democratic presidential nominee wins Pennsylvania’s electoral votes in the fall. Those folks are also similar to the voters who will decide whether Obama carries Ohio, Michigan and other industrial swing states come November. So as usual, the Democrats are the Republicans’ best asset when it comes to winning an election. Just more proof that it’s better to be lucky than good, especially when the other side picks an adversary who makes sure you’re lucky over and over again. You can reach Bill Shipp at P.O. Box 2520, Kennesaw, GA 30156, e-mail: shipp1@bellsouth.net, or Web address: billshipponline.com. bill shipp